THAT MORNING, seated on this unfriendly beach, and staring at Pagan’s sunken hulk, represented for me very nearly the low point of the entire trip. I concluded it was hell to be a greenhorn.
What a laugh. “Sydney or bust,” I had said when I pulled out of Panama. Now, 60 miles away, my boat was on the bottom—only 8440 miles to go! The cats seemed to sense my rancor and snuggled deeper in my lap.
I swam back to Pagan. It was heart-rending to stand on the sloping decks and muse over the hopelessness of the situation. I had thought I was in a bad way the day I had run aground at Isle Señora. I proved myself every inch a seaman by the foul language I used that morning. I cursed and ranted with all the invective I could lay my tongue to, and when I finished, strangely enough, I felt infinitely better.
Seated as I was on the one dry spot, the upraised beam was a familiar experience. Thus far I had almost as much sea time aboard Pagan on her beam ends ashore as keel-down in deep water. The trip that everyone had deprecated because it would be “too boring” was getting a little too exciting.
I had gone aground at half tide. In an hour most of the deck was uncovered and water was lapping around the keel, knee-deep. I climbed down and waded about the scarred hull, searching into her every scratch.
Under my hand the little boat had taken a considerable roughening. She had proved her mettle. It was sensible to presume that if the spunky cutter could possibly be repaired and floated, she could easily run the Pacific traverse. My introduction to sailing, at Pagan’s expense, was easily read in her scraped and scratched under-timbers. I opened the portholes to free some of her inside water. And as the tide fell lower I submerged head and shoulders into the engine compartment to unscrew the little seacock in the curve of the bilge.
The inside cabin was a frowzy raffle to delight a junk dealer. It was a headache I refused to consider for the moment. I was interested in Pagan’s leaks; I didn’t have to go far to find them.
The garboard strake on the port side had sprung at the stem, exposing the cement-filled bilge. Much of her calking had worked out of the seams, and through this fissure mainly the seepage had come. But there were other injuries beside this. The rudderpost had been wrenched from its keel seat. A few of the planks seemed disturbed where they fitted into the sternpost and stem; and a propeller flange was bent.
I noted the defects and noted they could be remedied. From inside I searched out a hammer, screwdriver, nails, and an old shirt. I nailed the strake flush in place against the keel and into the stem and sternpost. Using strippings from the shirt I calked the seams temporarily with the screwdriver and hammer. Of necessity I worked fast. The tide would soon be flowing back. I drove myself, so she would be ready to take the water when it returned.
I met the approaching tide as I crawled from under the last of my temporary repairs. There was only time now to secure her against leak on deck: to batten scuttles, ports, seacock, and seal the companionway off.
The sea marched up the beach, encircling my boat with lapping fingers and feeling at the repairs as if to escape through them. I watched.
Pagan lifted buoyantly on the flood as she had done beneath me before. Her leaks were only a driblet of what they had been; I offset them with a few turns at the pump. At full tide, well after dark, I drew my jaunty craft as close into shore as possible and moored her tightly with her keel thumping on the steep sandy floor and the bow pointing into the jungle. Wearied with labor and anxiety, I trudged up the beach to my wailing starvelings. In all the excitement I hadn’t touched food or drink all day. I was so thoroughly jaded that even the thought of going back to ferret out a can of fish for my mates from the morass aboard was an abomination. “In a few minutes I’ll go,” I said. When I got up to go it was daylight. The cats were gamboling about. It was a fair day; the tide was ebbing; my boat lay parallel to the beach line. The work at hand beckoned. But first . . . we were ravenous, the crew and I.
On board I found that all labels had washed off the cans. So potluck it was. I reached among the rows of cans and grabbed two. They turned out to be diced pineapple and spinach. The cats, forced to face the ups and downs of a sailor’s calling, whether they liked it or not, had diced pineapple for breakfast. For me, that morning, cold spinach from a can beat ham and eggs all to blazes, and the pineapple dessert was better than any cup of coffee I had ever tasted.
For the next ten days I lived the life of a royal Bohemian. I wore not a stitch; for a hat there was my matted crown, long since in need of cropping; I had not shaved since Panama and, for that matter, I had long since vowed not to shave until I was with Mary again. Barefoot and golden browned I lay to on my little boat, mending her scarred and strained timbers for a return bout with the sea.
My food was potluck, fished cold from a can; and the selections, as they turned out, were usually monstrous. But I rounded off my diet with fruits and vegetables from the jungle. Hard by were a grove of bananas and an abundant mango tree. Farther on I found avocados and green drinking coconuts, and papayas. I responded wholesomely to the fresh foods. My work showed it, and my full sleep and my appetite and my exuberance.
I bunked in the sand under a lean-to rigged from my staysail and oars. Such sleep, such appetite, such brotherhood with life as I felt in that rustic period, I have not known before or since. There was but one thing missing—Mary. But had she been there, there would have been no haste with repairs. There would have been no repairs. . . .
During those ten days I worked long and hard. When the tide was out I strove at Pagan’s hull with what tools I had at hand. When the tide was in and my stanch little cutter was pounded about on the beach, I pieced together and patched my battered mainsail, sewing up its three big tears, and making of it a new sail, stronger than before. In addition I patched and strengthened seams in all my sails, resewed boltropes, spliced cringles anew, and attached the hanks and slides more securely.
The job of cleaning house and stowing most of the gear on the beach at the foot of the jungle was a day’s work. It was the work done before any other, and it left me with only my boat to repair . . . and, as I hoped, sail out again.
The garboard planks I ripped off, plugged the old screw holes in strake and keel, drilled anew and rescrewed them more securely than before. I calked the seams with special calking cotton brought along for the purpose, using a screwdriver for a calking iron. I covered the seams with lead patching full length, puttied and painted over all.
I put a lead patch down each side of the stem, overlapping where the planks joined in . . . likewise the stern.
I thoroughly scraped and painted her down to the lead shoe on the keel bottom. I reset her rudderpost and hammered the propeller blade into plumb. And then I was ready to think of horizons again.
By far the weightiest problem concerning Pagan was the means of refloating her and kedging her off the beach. I had no anchor. So I concerned myself with this matter first.
It was apparent from the beginning that I must make an anchor of sorts since I had nothing I could use in its stead. My sea bag of rocks was useless as a kedge; what I needed was something that could grip the bottom offshore—something toward which I could pull Pagan, if I were able to get her afloat.
I felled a scrubby tree on the jungle edge and dressed it down to two suitable timbers—one long and thick, the other short and thin.
The largest and strongest I used for the shank of my anchor. Diagonally across its end I fitted the shorter piece, four feet in length, as its arm. On the ends of the arm I nailed long flukes that would sink into the sand no matter how the anchor lay. Such an anchor needed no stock or ring, but it had one weakness—it floated. I remedied this by binding to it two slabs of lead sawed from Pagan’s keel, one at its crown and the other at its upper shank.
I stood looking at the sea and my stranded boat, and estimating the distance between. My former experience of going aground helped me. In the beginning I laid in Pagan’s bilge and on her floor boards a number of heavy stones to steady her by their weight against pounding at high tide. The strategy to float her now was: await the tide and, since most of Pagan’s heavy stores were ashore and the stones on her floor were heavier than they, toss them quickly over. Accordingly the little craft should bob up. I could then kedge her away and anchor her. I inflated my pneumatic rubber raft to carry the kedge anchor off astern into deep water.
A half-dozen rods offshore I eased the hand-hewn anchor from the raft and watched it gulped from view. I rowed back ashore and sat beside Pagan’s cache of stores on the jungle fringe. Flotsam and Jetsam crept into my lap, and together we watched the first investigating lips of the inbound tide nibble at the keel.
In a while, Pagan shifted about uneasily, thumping her beam on the sand, tending to skew around. When the tide had flooded sufficiently, I tautened the kedge line and seized its bitter end to the traveler. My boat floundered between her desire to rise and the press of the weight in her bilge. As fast as I could, I heaved the rocks over the side. Pagan buoyed up beautifully. I heaved on the chain, the kedge held, and off I went to anchor.
My chief concern was whether my boat was leaking. If she was leaking it meant I must run back to Panama for repairs. If not, I was determined to press on.
I went below and flashed a light along the planking and into the bilge. Everything was tight. Not a drop of water issued from the outer sea. When I came on deck the bow was pointing out to open water as though instinct had pulled it there and as though a prayer had been answered.
The same wicked intuition that had inspired me to sail alone from Panama now egged me on to make for the open sea.
It was late afternoon. I was anxious to be going. I pulled my rubber raft up to the transom, stepped into it, and rowed to where the tide tinkled on the strand and Pagan’s gear lay heaped beneath a sail, and where Flotsam and Jetsam yowled beneath their bucket, the very bucket that was later to save my life. For the next three hours, I moiled with transporting the gear from the beach to the decks. At dusk I made my last trip, with the affrighted kittens staring innocent-eyed from atop the last of the stores into the blackening water.
In less than an hour I was lashing the little rubber raft under the staysail boom forward. I heaved the freak anchor aboard and secured it on the forepeak. Pagan’s sails were spread; and billowing to a soft breeze, she stemmed out of the little bay. Something intuitive told me that this time it was real; I was on my way into the “vasty deeps” of the Pacific. Of course, I thought of returning to Panama to check my repairs. It was the wise thing to do. But when in an hour not a drop of water showed in the bilge, and when I reflected on the near month I had already lost, days, even hours, became precious in my race with the hurricane season across the Pacific.
The very fact that Pagan was again afloat, and making her own way, made me feel a thousand miles closer to Mary.
At midnight, when I had made a safe offing, I set the prow on a track of southwest by west, lashed the tiller, and turned in to my warm bunk with my mates.